Statutes and Mission

The Center for United Nations Constitutional Research (CUNCR) is an independent think-tank focused on the United Nations Charter and on promoting the constitutionalization of the UN and of international law, with the aim of legitimizing global governance and affirming the global rights of “we the peoples”. The Center for United Nations Constitutional Research, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, is a not-for-profit, independent organization, with no governmental, religious or partisan, affiliation.

The CUNCR mission and vision, as registered with the Ministry of Justice of Belgium, as a not-for-profit organization, with international standing, AISBL, and as it appears in the statutes of the organization, is reprinted below in English and French.

THE CENTER FOR UNITED NATIONS CONSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH STATUES
SECTION II – PURPOSE AND ACTIVITIES

Article 4
The Association is a not-for-profit independent think-tank, the primary mission of which is to provide research and policy recommendations concerning the Charter and the structure of the United Nations (UN) in the direction of achieving the Charter Preamble’s “we the peoples” ideals and objectives and towards its constitutionalization. It will also monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the UN system in achieving its stated goals, particularly in the areas of maintaining international peace and security, promoting and protecting human rights, and the resolution of global problems, such as those relating to the environment, disarmament, global poverty and pandemics.

Recognizing that the UN and current international law are primarily state-centric and therefore democratically deficient, the Association will focus on the promotion and protection of global citizens’ rights in a representative global governance paradigm. In particular, the Association will promote:

In-depth study and research into the UN Charter, including the Charter’s strengths and weaknesses, and taking into account the relevance and effectiveness of the UN in the current fragmented international-law and governance regime. This will include research into, and recommendations concerning, the required features of, or changes to, the Charter in order to empower the UN to deal with global problems in a democratic institutional setting and always in accordance with the rule of law.

Research into the existing international human rights conventions, such as the UN “international bill of human rights” – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) – and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in order to assess their effectiveness in promoting human rights and delivering global justice. This will include using these covenants as models to research, recommend and monitor development and protection of global fundamental rights for a constitutionalized United Nations.

Recognizing that global citizens are objects and subjects of international law, its interlocutors, and its ultimate legitimizers, thereby advancing formal recognition and protection of a rights-based global citizen, and world citizens’ participation and representation in the global law-making process. In order to further enable the UN to provide for global democracy and justice, this will include encouraging research into, and recommendations concerning, the constitutionalizing of global citizens’ sovereignty and fundamental rights through the incorporation of an international bill of rights into a transformed Charter.

In order to achieve these objectives, the Association will, inter alia, carry out the following activities:

Cooperation and collaboration with academic institutions, civil society and NGOs, media, and other global non-state actors concerned with democratizing and improving global governance and government, including the transparent dissemination of related information to the global public.

Provide for research and analysis, training, feasibility studies and policy recommendations to individuals and non-state-actors, as well as governments, international organizations, the European Union and other shared-sovereignty regional and supra-national organizations, on the subject of union of states in general and the UN in particular.

Research and recommendations on the feasibility of a UN parliamentary assembly or a global parliament.

Provide for training, research assistance, and recommendations to states and non-state actors and global governance institutions in their policy formulations concerning UN reform and the international-law structural and institutional solutions needed to enable more democratic and comprehensive collective action in addressing current and future global problems and challenges.